Team for Research in
Ubiquitous Secure Technology

Citation
Faculty and Staff. "TRUST Annual Report 2009-2010". Unpublished article, May, 2010.

Abstract
The Team for Research in Ubiquitous Security Technology (TRUST) was created in response to a growing sense of urgency in dealing with all aspects of cyber security as it affects society. The role and penetration of computing systems and networks in our societal infrastructure continues to grow and their importance to societal safety and the security has never been greater. Beyond mere connection to the internet and access to global resources, information systems form the backbone of our nation's financial services and electronic commerce, are used for controlling critical infrastructures such as power, water, and telecommunications, and enable the rapid evolution in healthcare toward enhanced services increasingly supported by the digital storage of and instant access to patient health and medical data. That said, many such computing and control systems remain untrustworthy. Waves of viruses and worms sweep the Internet and exhibit increasing virulence and rate of speed that is also directly proportional to their growing ease of deployment. Issues affecting privacy are poorly understood and, when they are understood, are often not sufficiently addressed in system design and development. Security is generally inadequate, and some speak of a "market failure" in the domain. Broader issues of software usability, reliability and correctness remain challenging. Industry stakeholders are unable to recruit new employees adequately trained in these technologies. Society is placing computers into critical roles, although they do not meet the requirements of trust.

TRUST is composed of several universities that have joined forces to organize a multifaceted response to these issues. TRUST represents the strongest and most diverse engagement in the area of trusted systems ever assembled. TRUST recognized the breadth of the problems and has combined fundamental science with a broader multidisciplinary focus on economic, social, and legal considerations as well as a substantial education mission. TRUST is enabling dialog with stakeholders whose needs simply cannot be approached in a narrower and purely technical manner or by any single research group. As such, TRUST acts as an intermediary between policy makers and society at large on the one hand, and researchers, academics, and industrial providers of services and technology on the other. TRUST seeks to achieve its mission through research as well as a global policy for engaging in education of society as a whole. This annual report of TRUST details the experience of the Center along many dimensions—research, education, diversity, and knowledge transfer.

In research, TRUST has achieved success along several fronts and is addressing fundamental scientific and technological problems and advancing the state-of-the-art in a number of areas: security and privacy issues associated with the rapidly increasing use of electronic media for the archival and access of patient medical records; web authentication, end-user privacy, next-generation browser security, malware detection, and improved system forensic techniques to combat online attacks; application defenses for network-level intrusions and attacks including compromised and malfunctioning legacy applications, viruses, worms, and spyware; incentives for research, investment, policies, and procedures for technology that enhance system security, privacy, and trustworthiness; secure embedded sensor networks for large-scale applications critical to the nation’s economy, energy, security, and health; and techniques that ensure trustworthy computing by securing hardware, improving software robustness, and increasing the survivability of critical systems.

In education, TRUST is leveraging an existing learning technology infrastructure to quickly enable TRUST courseware and material to be assembled, deposited in a repository, and adapted for wide web-based content dissemination. In addition to developing special courses for undergraduate and graduate curricula, and regular seminars and webcasts, TRUST has hosted a series of workshops on sensor networks, privacy, identity theft, and electronic medical records. A major thrust recently has been focused on increasing content in the TRUST Academy Online (TAO) and continuing the redesign of the TAO portal.

In diversity, TRUST has an ambitious goal of reaching a diversity goal across the Center of 30% women and 10% from underrepresented minorities. The Center has been very proactive in this regard and expanded several programs for enhancing diversity and broadening the participation of women and underrepresented minorities.

In knowledge transfer, TRUST has continued a robust program of technology transition with industry (from reporting security vulnerabilities to software vendors to various consulting activities) and active engagement with governmental agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Department of Defense (DoD), and the Department of Energy (DoE) which are all concerned with issues of cybersecurity and trustworthiness. Recently, this has been expanded to include key constituents in the financial sector, in particular through dialogue and exchange of ideas with the Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC). TRUST also has an active set of industrial partners with whom we are engaging in research and development collaborations of mutual interest.

Overall, we are happy to report that the Center is making excellent progress towards its goals, its participants are actively engaged, and the outlook is positive.

Electronic downloads

• TRUST%202009-2010%20Annual%20Report--PUBLIC.pdf · application/pdf · 2786 kbytes

• HTML

    Faculty and Staff. <a
  href="http://www.truststc.org/pubs/755.html"
  ><i>TRUST Annual Report
  2009-2010</i></a>, Unpublished article,  May,
  2010.

• Plain text

    Faculty and Staff. "TRUST Annual Report
  2009-2010". Unpublished article,  May, 2010.

• BibTeX

  @unpublished{FacultyandStaff10_TRUSTAnnualReport20092010,
      author = {  Faculty and Staff},
      title = {TRUST Annual Report 2009-2010},
      month = {May},
      year = {2010},
      abstract = {The Team for Research in Ubiquitous Security
                Technology (TRUST) was created in response to a
                growing sense of urgency in dealing with all
                aspects of cyber security as it affects society.
                The role and penetration of computing systems and
                networks in our societal infrastructure continues
                to grow and their importance to societal safety
                and the security has never been greater. Beyond
                mere connection to the internet and access to
                global resources, information systems form the
                backbone of our nation's financial services and
                electronic commerce, are used for controlling
                critical infrastructures such as power, water, and
                telecommunications, and enable the rapid evolution
                in healthcare toward enhanced services
                increasingly supported by the digital storage of
                and instant access to patient health and medical
                data. That said, many such computing and control
                systems remain untrustworthy. Waves of viruses and
                worms sweep the Internet and exhibit increasing
                virulence and rate of speed that is also directly
                proportional to their growing ease of deployment.
                Issues affecting privacy are poorly understood
                and, when they are understood, are often not
                sufficiently addressed in system design and
                development. Security is generally inadequate, and
                some speak of a "market failure" in the domain.
                Broader issues of software usability, reliability
                and correctness remain challenging. Industry
                stakeholders are unable to recruit new employees
                adequately trained in these technologies. Society
                is placing computers into critical roles, although
                they do not meet the requirements of trust.
                <p>TRUST is composed of several universities that
                have joined forces to organize a multifaceted
                response to these issues. TRUST represents the
                strongest and most diverse engagement in the area
                of trusted systems ever assembled. TRUST
                recognized the breadth of the problems and has
                combined fundamental science with a broader
                multidisciplinary focus on economic, social, and
                legal considerations as well as a substantial
                education mission. TRUST is enabling dialog with
                stakeholders whose needs simply cannot be
                approached in a narrower and purely technical
                manner or by any single research group. As such,
                TRUST acts as an intermediary between policy
                makers and society at large on the one hand, and
                researchers, academics, and industrial providers
                of services and technology on the other. TRUST
                seeks to achieve its mission through research as
                well as a global policy for engaging in education
                of society as a whole. This annual report of TRUST
                details the experience of the Center along many
                dimensions—research, education, diversity, and
                knowledge transfer. <p>In research, TRUST has
                achieved success along several fronts and is
                addressing fundamental scientific and
                technological problems and advancing the
                state-of-the-art in a number of areas: security
                and privacy issues associated with the rapidly
                increasing use of electronic media for the
                archival and access of patient medical records;
                web authentication, end-user privacy,
                next-generation browser security, malware
                detection, and improved system forensic techniques
                to combat online attacks; application defenses for
                network-level intrusions and attacks including
                compromised and malfunctioning legacy
                applications, viruses, worms, and spyware;
                incentives for research, investment, policies, and
                procedures for technology that enhance system
                security, privacy, and trustworthiness; secure
                embedded sensor networks for large-scale
                applications critical to the nation’s economy,
                energy, security, and health; and techniques that
                ensure trustworthy computing by securing hardware,
                improving software robustness, and increasing the
                survivability of critical systems. <p>In
                education, TRUST is leveraging an existing
                learning technology infrastructure to quickly
                enable TRUST courseware and material to be
                assembled, deposited in a repository, and adapted
                for wide web-based content dissemination. In
                addition to developing special courses for
                undergraduate and graduate curricula, and regular
                seminars and webcasts, TRUST has hosted a series
                of workshops on sensor networks, privacy, identity
                theft, and electronic medical records. A major
                thrust recently has been focused on increasing
                content in the TRUST Academy Online (TAO) and
                continuing the redesign of the TAO portal. <p>In
                diversity, TRUST has an ambitious goal of reaching
                a diversity goal across the Center of 30% women
                and 10% from underrepresented minorities. The
                Center has been very proactive in this regard and
                expanded several programs for enhancing diversity
                and broadening the participation of women and
                underrepresented minorities. <p>In knowledge
                transfer, TRUST has continued a robust program of
                technology transition with industry (from
                reporting security vulnerabilities to software
                vendors to various consulting activities) and
                active engagement with governmental agencies such
                as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the
                Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR),
                the Department of Defense (DoD), and the
                Department of Energy (DoE) which are all concerned
                with issues of cybersecurity and trustworthiness.
                Recently, this has been expanded to include key
                constituents in the financial sector, in
                particular through dialogue and exchange of ideas
                with the Financial Services Technology Consortium
                (FSTC). TRUST also has an active set of industrial
                partners with whom we are engaging in research and
                development collaborations of mutual interest.
                <p>Overall, we are happy to report that the Center
                is making excellent progress towards its goals,
                its participants are actively engaged, and the
                outlook is positive.},
      URL = {http://www.truststc.org/pubs/755.html}
  }
  

Posted by Larry Rohrbough on 4 Oct 2010.
Groups: trust
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